Saturday 21 March 2015

Grumble Grumble Grumble

This is just me having a bit of a rant. Feel free to scroll past if you are not in the mood ;)

I moved house in April last year, which meant registering with a new GP. Registering was fine. All seemed good. The practice has a surgery in my village, which *is* good, and they have a small dispensary there, so if necessary you can get your prescription at the surgery.All good.

But.

Ever since moving, I have had trouble with my prescriptions. Initially, the problem was that my registration with the online ordering system wasn't working. After about 4 phone calls and 3 in-person visits to the surgery it turned out that they had mis-transcribed my email address. 

Which I would mind less had it not been for the fact that I had suspected, the first time I had a problem, that they might have done exactly that, and had specifically asked them to double check, and had been assured, multiple times, that it was correct.

Then, when I finally got access to the online ordering system, I found that it would not let me order one of my repeat prescription.

Another phone call plus visit to the surgery and I worked out that this was because the dosage was wrong, so the system thinks I use 25% of my actual dosage, so of course it thinks I only need to reorder a quarter as often as I *actually* need to reorder.

So I made an appointment to see my new GP, who I'd never previously met, and explained the issue (and also that this time, the problem seems to be too accurate transcribing - I think the error was actually made by my old GP, but no one there ever checked it against the actual prescriptions I was requesting, or noticed that the numbers didn't add up.)

And I thought he had corrected it. Except - I ordered a prescription, and it didn't get sent to the pharmacy requested, and as I found when I called in at the surgery to enquire, and it was wrong. So I reiterated what I had requested, and they promised to correct it and get it sent to the right pharmacy.

I went to pick up my medication from the chemist yesterday, and found that the prescription they sent to be filled included both my medications (so ended up paying a prescription charge for something I hadn't ordered, and don't currently need.) That's not the end of the world. It doesn't go off, and I can stockpile it. 

But it is a little worrying that they can't get it right.

But. I checked the copy of the prescription and the dosage is *still* not right. It's improving. We're up to 75% of the correct dosage. 

*Sigh* So now I shall have to write another letter to them, and hope they can get it right.

Sunday 15 March 2015

Terry Pratchett : 1948 - 2015

I was updating our company's twitter feed on Thursday afternoon, saw retweets of posts from Terry Pratchett's account and realised, after some frantic googling, that it was true, that PTerry, Sir Terry Pratchett, had died.

I kept googling, hoping against hope that I'd find the site, the news story, that said it was a lie, or a malicious hoax, or that Terry's family had checked, and discovered that he was actually clasping a little sign saying "I aten't' dead" but of course I couldn't find one, because it wasn't.

Later, when I got home from work, I was able to turn on the news, and there could be no more doubt, (or hope). The story was a leading headline on the national news , and as Terry lived here in the West Country, it was also the lead on the local news, with soundbites from the Doctors at RICE, in Bath, where Terry's embuggerance was researched and treated. 

And it feels like losing an old friend.

I first encountered Terry over 25 years ago, in an English Literature lesson. Of course, they were not teaching us his work. We were supposed to be studying Oliver Twist, but were in fact not studying it, so much as reading it aloud, V.E.R.Y.     V.E.R.Y.    S.L.O.W.L.Y. and with absolutely no expression. I was very bored (and lost all interest in Dickens for a decade or so). And a friend offered to lend me a paperback book, small enough to read discreetly inside my copy of Oliver Twist (It is easier to get away with this stuff when you have the reputation of being quiet and studious). 

I wasn't immediately taken by the book. The cover was a bit garish, and had wizards, and big muscly men with double-headed axes, which made me think it was likely to be a sub-Tolkien swords-and-sorcery story - not my favourite thing. But  still, anything seemed better than slow motion Dickens, so I started to read The Colour of Magic... And realised that it was not, after all, quite what I expected. And that I wanted more.

I think I borrowed the next two or three books over the following weeks, and then (because this was 1988 or '89, and there were only 5 or 6 paperbacks) I ran out, and the wait for each new book began.

I think Wyrd Sisters was the first Discworld book I bought rather than borrowing, when it first came out in paperback, and I spent the next 10 years buying each new novel as it came out in paperback (I could not afford the hardcovers). Good Omens  is how I found out about Neil Gaiman, so I have Terry to thank for that, as well.

I got to meet Terry in 1999. I was newly qualified, and living in Manchester, and not terribly happy. I had been in Manchester city centre, for a court hearing, and decided to go and spend a little whole browsing in Waterstones, and perhaps having a coffee in their cafe, to avoid having to drive home in heavy traffic, as there had been a road closure on my route home. 

I got to the cafe, and discovered that all of the seating had been rearranged in neat rows, and learned that this was because Terry Pratchett would be coming, for a signing of his new book, The Fifth Elephant. 

So of course, I had to stay. I bought a copy of The Fifth Elephant  (my first hardback Pratchett) and a copy of Eric as mine had filed to return from a loan to a friend. And over the next hour or so, I started to read, the room filled up, and the Terry arrived, and spoke briefly, and signed. And signed, and signed. I am pretty sure that his minder had brought a packet of frozen peas along for him to rest his wrist on, knowing how much signing would be necessary.

I told Terry why I was buying a new copy of Eric, so he wrote 'Give it Back' in the new copy. (Of course, I didn't lend out *that* copy, after that!)  And he he was kind, and friendly, when I babbled about how much I enjoyed his books, just as if he hadn't heard exactly the same thing from hundreds of other people.

I had been near the front of the queue, and as I left I realised that the queue was not simply the 150 or so people sitting in the cafe, nor those winding their way around the whole of the 3rd floor. The queue continued down the stairs, around the 2nd floor, down a second flight of stairs, around the 1st floor, down another flight of stairs, and around the ground floor. It did not stretch out of the door into the street, but only because they had closed the doors. . . 

It was the first time I had ever been to a signing, for anyone. It was around the same time, I think, that I discovered that that 'Neil Gaiman' bloke, who Terry had written Good Omens with had also written some other stuff, ensuring that I found The Sandman and was properly hooked by the time American Gods came out.

The second time I met Terry was nearly 10 years later, in 2008. Terry was to be featured on a BBC Radio 4 program, 'With Great Pleasure', which was broadcast on Christmas Day 2008. The program featured him talking about books and writers which were important to him, and was recorded at the Forum, in Bath. 

I wrote about it at the time - it was a fascinating evening in which Terry talked about pieces of writing which had interested or inspired him.

This was, of course, about a year  after Terry had gone public about his Embuggarance, and the script from the evening was auctioned off for Alzheimer's, and Terry himself explained, at the end of the evening, that while he would be happy to sign things for people, he would not be able to personalise them, as while he could sign his name, adding other details 'derailed' his hand/eye coordination, and slowed him down.

I continued to buy and read Terry's books (buying them in hardback on publication day, by this time: one of a very small number of authors I will do that for) and continued to be frequently moved to laughter, and to tears (and sometimes to tears of laughter) by his work.

It is almost impossible to pick a favourite Pratchett book - I have a very soft spot for Reaper Man, for all of the Sam Vimes books, perhaps particularly the later ones as Sam deals with marriage and fatherhood. Nation stands as perhaps one of the most thoughtful, and The Unadulterated Cat is, of course, unmatched as a truthful reflection of life with cats. 

I can think of only one or two other authors who have been such close and constant companions to me in my reading life. 

I didn't know Terry in person. I loved the stories he lived, as well as those he wrote. It is deeply satisfying to know that he chose to mine the ore for, and help to forge, his own sword when he was knighted, for instance. And I suspect that many of his thousands of fans will, like me, be smiling through our tears as we re-read he work, and remember.




R.I.P. Terry. 
Thank you for everything

Saturday 14 March 2015

Bath Festival of Literature Part #3 - Aspects of WWII

The final events I attended at the Bath Literature Festival were both based on books about WWII, but couldn't have been more different.

The first event was Rick Stroud, speaking about the events around the kidnap of General Kreipe on Crete during WWII, by a team led by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Stroud gave a summary of the incident. Originally planned as a kidnap of General Müller 'the butcher of Crete', the target changed when Müller was replaced by Kreipe.

Stroud described the (often bizarre) group of young SOE men who planned the kidnap, and the extraordinary Cretans who assisted them, risking everything.

It's a fascinating story - famously made into a film 'Ill met by Moonlight' . 

It wasn't, ultimately, particularly useful in terms of the war effort, but it was a heroic effort, with a very interesting cast of characters. I  didn't buy Stroud's book, although I think I may borrow it from the library, and perhaps also look for Leigh-Fermor's own account, too.

The second event was about a very different element of the War - the women who worked at Bletchley Park. The event was withTessa Dunlop,who has tracked down many of the women of Bletchley Park who are still alive, and persuaded them to tell their stories, and the resulting book, The Bletchley Girls has now been published.


Tessa Dunlop has a wonderful enthusiasm for the women she met, and she brought them vividly to life as she spoke about the work they did, and  their post-war lives.

The women undertook a range of jobs at Bletchley, from transcribing intercepts, to working as a messenger, to working on the 'Bombe' machines, and came from a variety of backgrounds: in the beginning, the majority of the women were the wives and daughters (and wives and daughters of friends) of the men who were working at, or who knew about, Bletchley Park, and so were mainly middle or upper class, but over time, as the number of people working there increased, a wider range of girls and women were recruited.

As well as speaking about the women and their roles, Dunlop played  recordings of several of the women themselves, and showed us a number of photos of them, then and now. She also pointed out that as the work was secret, none of the women told anyone what they had done until maybe 30 years after the end of the war, and that many of them had, in the mean time, married and had husbands who were not particularly interested in what they may have done in the war!


I was already broadly familiar with the work of Bletchley Park, but Dunlop's enthusiasm and knowledge of her subject made me want to read the book and learn more about this particular aspect of work there.


By a happy coincidence, the event was held a a venue I have not been to before - the former chapel (now a small museum) at the Mineral Hospital (Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases). It is rather nice, and has some lovely stained glass, including the delightful gentleman on the right, in the fez! 

I shall have to go back to look around the museum when I have time.

Monday 9 March 2015

Bath Festival of Literature Part #2

There were  a couple of events which I should have liked to see, as part of the festival, but could not as they clashed with my London trip (it's  hard life!).

However, on Friday evening I was back in Bath, at the Guildhall,to see Kazuo Ishiguro interviewed about his new novel, The Buried Giant. 

It was an interesting evening. Ishiguro began by reading the first few pages of the novel, and was  then interviewed by Alex Clark.

He explained that he had been thinking about writing a novel about the issues covered in The Buried Giant for about 15 years, and that he had wanted to write a book which , unlike most of his earlier novels, which are written in the first person and address issues of individual memories, and that he has always been interested in how nations remember and forget.

He talked about the issue of when is it (is it ever?) the right thing to do, for a nation to bury dark memories. 

This book is, he explained, an exploration of that process of remembering and forgetting applied to a marriage and to a nation.

He decided to set the book in a distant and mythical time and place, despite thinking about lots of modern examples, such as the situations in Rwanda, in Kosovo, in France during and after WW2 in part because he is not a journalistic novelist, and does not do lots of factual research in a way that would be necessary if the novel were set in a specific, recent time and place, but also because "that is not the kind of truth I am trying to create" - he was thinking of patterns that recur over and over, and did not want to be nailed down to one specific point in history.

He was then asked about whether the book was fantasy, bearing in mind that it has ogres and pixies in. I was a little disappointed at his response. It would have been nice to hear him say, yes, it's fantasy, and it is also a literary novel. But he didn't. Instead, he spoke of his surprise that the issue had got much attention, that he felt that boundaries between genres are shifting and that he had 'felt free' to do this - he even went so far as to say that if there were sides, he was on the side of the ogres, and did not want "the imagination police" leaning over his shoulder to tell him what he could or could not write. .  .but only after carefully identifying himself as a 'literary novelist', using fantasy as a tool. It would have been nice had he simply said "Yes, it's fantasy".

Be that as it may, it was an interesting discussion, and I am looking forward to reading the novel.

Sunday 8 March 2015

The rest of my trip to London

The main reason for going to London (this time) were to meet up with N and A, and to see Neil give his lecture, but happily there was also time for other fun things.

When I first got to London, I met up with N and we had a delightful lunch at Nopi, Yotam Ottolenghi's restaurant. 

I did not know before that yogurt could be caramalised, but it seems that it can... ! 

 (the restaurant also has the most disconcerting bathrooms ever - they have infinitely reflecting mirrors, a  little like an unusually refined funfair...

 Very elegant to have around the basins, but I am not wholly convinced that having multiple, full-length mirrors, in a lavatory cubicle is entirely appealing...)

After lunch we went to Foyles, for some book shopping. They had a delightful display of penguins in the window  (the artist was Chloe Spicer) . The penguins were made from, and celebrating the Penguin 'Little Black Classics'

I was a little sad that perfectly good little books had died to make the little penguins, but they do seem to be happy, book-loving penguins, so I shall get over it!


I had not intended to buy any books, as they are heavy to carry, and I do have several lovely local bookshops, but I was unable to resist temptation. I have never found it easy to leave a bookshop without buying books, or indeed to pass a bookshop without going in.

 Only two of the books I bought were full size, though. . . I did bring some little black penguin classics home with me, although I have not the skill to turn them into actual penguins after reading them..

We had time for some tea and cake before heading to Neil's lecture, and also to admire the beautiful Burmese cat living at N's BandB, which was very nice!

On the Wednesday, I had most of the day to myself, as my train was not until late afternoon.

I started off with a visit to Leighton House Museum, the former home of Frederic, Lord Leighton, who had the house built in 1866, and then extended a few years later to house Leighton's collection of tiles and other artifacts collected in the Middle East, and it is an amazing building. 


(photo of 'The Roses of Heliogabulus from exhibition website)
It is also, currently, housing an exhibition of Victorian artwork owned by Mexican collector Juan Antonio Pérez Simón, and featuring in particular, Alma Tadema's  The Roses of Heliogabalus, which was displayed in a rose-scented room!

For me, the highlight was not the artwork, but the building itself. 

(photo of Arab Hall from museum website)
The house features the wonderful 'Arab Hall',a beautiful space, decorated with  Iznik (Turkish) and Syrian tiles, and modern tiles made by William de Morgan  to compliment the originals, and fill in the gaps. 

The hall is topped by a glorious golden dome, and contains a fountain.

I had arrived just as the museum opened and was lucky enough to have the hall to myself for a time, to enjoy the tranquility and the beautiful details. 

The entrance hall is also lovely, with the most glorious peacock-blue tiles on the walls, although frustratingly, you are not allowed to take pictures, (and the selection of postcards was very limited :( )

The exhibition is ending at the end of this month, but the house is open all year round, and is more than worth visiting!

After leaving Leighton House, I moved on to another exhibition (also close to ending!) - the Sherlock Holmes exhibition at the Museum of London.   

The museum have the outside of the museum in an appropriate manner, and inside are all sorts of interesting things - after entering through a 'secret' door, there is a lot of information about Victorian London, including maps (some showing the routes taken by Holmes and Watson in specific stories, and the method of travel ( foot, cab, rail etc) 

There was art, both contemporary art and photographs of London (Including a slightly unexpected Monet!), original illustrations from the stories, and a selection of posters and other artwork relating to various other iterations of the stories, including the Robert Downey Jnr. film, and a french pornographic film.. 

Further into the exhibition were some of Conan Doyle's original manuscripts, and information and artifacts related to criminal investigation in the Holmes era, plus examples of clothing, accessories etc. of the period. (including theatrical make up and props)

And, of course, props from some of the dramatisations, including Benedict Cumberatch's coat from the BBC's Sherlock.

I found it entertaining, but not quite the 'must see' which some of the reviews I have read suggested. 

I finished up by wandering around the rest of the museum, including the parts devoted to Roman and Medieval London, before heading back to the station (and a *very* crowded train home. 

Now to start planning what I shall do with my next visit to London, when I shall have another couple of days . . .

Wednesday 4 March 2015

The 13th Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture

I heard, back in October, that Neil Gaiman would be giving the 13th Annual Douglas Adams Memorial lecture, at the Royal Geographical Society in London, so I booked tickets for myself and a friend, and then mostly forgot about it, until last week when we started planning. 
(And  happily another friend was able to get a ticket, late on, so there were 3 of us, in the evening)


We arrived just after 6:30 and were met, outside the venue, by a Rhino. (The event was to support the charity, Save the Rhino, of which Douglas Adams was a supporter and patron), so the Rhino was not out of place!

Once inside, we found seats, (and found several other friends, too, although there wasn't much opportunity to catch up) and waited for Neil, while a film about the work of Save the Rhino, and its sister organisation, The Environmental Investigation Agency, (EIA) played on a big screen.

The lecture was worth the wait.
Dirk Maggs introducing Neil

Douglas Adams' (half) brother, James Thrift gave a brief introduction, Julian Newman of EIA explained the work of both organisations, and then Dirk Maggs (who of course was very involved in both the original HHGTTG radio shows, and with the more recent Good Omens radio drama, and with the HHGTTG live stage show) introduced Neil.

The speech was live-streamed, and the full lecture is available on YouTube, and I would recommend watching it.

I won't, therefore, try to report everything which was said, but have to mention a few favourite points. 

Neil's explanation that when thinking about the lecture, he had asked himself "what would Douglas do?"  ... as a result of which he was writing the lecture at 4:30 p.m ... and hoped to finish it at the weekend!

Neil talked about Adams' influence on him, and then moved on to talk about immortality and stories as lifeforms, and books as sharks.. all of which made perfect sense as he was saying it...

He talked about the immortality of stories - the oldest plants we know of are 5,000 years old, the oldest animals around 300 years old, but we have stories which can be traced back 8,000 years (a Native American story of forbidden love and volcanoes), and others which have survived from ancient Egypt (the Tale of the two Brothers) 

He spoke too, of his cousin Helen, a survivor of the Warsaw and Rodomsko ghettos, was, quite literally prepared to risk her life for stories, hiding and reading a copy of 'Gone with the Wind' which had been smuggled in, and retelling the story to her friends. He made the point that while fiction is often criticised for being 'escapist',escapism is not always a bad thing. There are places, and situations, from which it is good to escape.

At the end of the lecture there was time for  few questions, and as these had been collected before hand on index cards, it avoided the whole problem of the  endless question..

Neil was asked whether Douglas would have used twitter, and he confirmed thast Douglas would, no doubt, have used twitter to avoid writing two, maybe three further books (Neil described the internet as like his personal Tamagotchi: there are all those people on twitter, and you feel that if you don't give the a little love and attention, they will wither and die!)

He was asked which of his works he would like to be remembered for (Answer: Any of them) and speculated about how AA Milne, and JM Barrie would have felt had they know what they would be remembered for. It is, he said, so easy to be forgotten, so he would pick "any of them" 

Then there was a question about whether he felt things more, or less, than when he was younger. His answer was that you feel things differently but that he was not sure that he could kill people with the same joyous abandon as he did in the early days. . . 

But these are just my highlights. You should absolutely watch, and listen to the whole thing.





We none of us won any of the raffle prizes, but after the lecture finished and the raffle was drawn, Neil hung around for a little while and we were able to say hello,  and to give him hugs and cake, both of which are good things in almost every situation, and certainly in this one!

We (or rather my friend A, who is more observant than me) also got a little thrill by recognizing Arthur Darvill (AKA Rory-the-Roman-Williams) who had been in the audience,as we left!

A most delightful evening!

Sunday 1 March 2015

An Excellent start to the Bath Festival of Literature



The Bath Festival of Literature  started yesterday evening, and I went to the first of the events I have booked, today. They were very different - one an interview with Mark Bostridge, who is the biographer of Vera Brittain, was an advisor on the film 'Testament of Youth' and who has just written a new book, Vera Brittain and the First World War. The second event was Austentatious, an improvised Jane Austen play...

I enjoyed both events.

Mark Bostridge was interviewed by Elizabeth Day, who is herself a novelist and a journalist for the Observer. Bostridge explained that he felt Brittain's story was a compelling one, particularly in being one of the first to address and explore the grief of the war, rather than its heroism, but also to show how it was possible to move on.

He spoke about the difficulty of writing a biography of someone with a living family; the family will say they want truth, but may not want it when they hear it.. he gave a couple of examples. 

One was a letter which Brittain wrote to her friend after her marriage, saying extremely uncomplimentary things about her husband on their wedding night, and the other, later, about an unpublished memoir written by her brother Edward's Commanding Officer, in which he disclosed that Edward had been warned by his CO that his letters to another officer were being read. Bostridge linked this to an incident in Brittain's novel 'Honourable Estate' in which a character caught having sex with another man deliberately got himself killed by going over the top. Bostridge explained the social and legal consequences of homosexual behaviour, at the time. 

He did explain that of course it is impossible know with any certainty whether Edward was gay(although he did attend Uppingham school, which was apparently exposed as being notorious for bullying and "filthy behaviour" . . 

He also spoke about the importance of realizing that Testament of Youth was written some 15 years after the event, and that having also read Brittain's letters and diary, it was fascinating to see the change to her attitude. For instance, her diaries show a very patriotic, almost Jingoistic enthusiasm at the start of the war, and was enthusiastic about her brother joining up, which is not reflected in the finished work.

Bostridge said that he was, on the whole, happy with the film - other than the scene where Brittoai learns about Leighton's death. He also pointed out that the film is somewhat misleading in how Brittain's parents treated her wish to attend University - he sad that Brittain's mother was very enthusiastic and supportive, and that Britton herself had reservations, fearing that going to Oxford would make it harder for her to marry well! 

All in all, very interesting. I haven't yet seen the Testament of Youth film but do want to do so. 

I then headed over to the Forum, for Austentatious. 

Which was a complete change of pace, and a whole lot of fun. 

It is an improvised performance of a 'lost' Austen(esque) novel based on a title suggested by the audience - in this case,'Who cares what colour *that* dress is', beating 'Maids in Waiting' (Described by the cast as 'the Made in Essex of its day) and described as one of Austen's 700+ lost novels..

The play was performed by a cast of 5, masquerading as a cast of thousands (well, 10s, anyway) and included a ball, an elopement, some jam, many references to what happened 'last time', and a happy ending for at least one couple! 


Photo from @Viv Groskop's twitter feed and (C) Viv Groskop
It was a whole lot of fun. Austentatious are currently touring - well worth seeing if you can (dates on their website, here)

I am looking forward to several ore Bath Lit Fest events next weekend including seeing Kazuo Ishiguro, and Celia Imrie.